WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said federal immigration agents will not suspend vehicle stops, one day after officials announced a temporary pause after agents fatally shot two men in Texas and Maine during traffic stops.
“We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote in a social media post.
His words contradicted administration officials’ announcement on Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had ordered its officers to suspend most vehicle stops around the country after two killings in the span of a week.
The agency’s aggressive tactics are once again under scrutiny after an ICE officer on Monday killed a driver from Colombia in the coastal Maine town of Biddeford, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Portland. Six days earlier, another ICE officer in Houston fatally shot a Mexican national.
In both cases, the agents had attempted to pull over the drivers, even though officials have acknowledged they were not the targets of the operations.
“It’s not a policy change, it’s a temporary pause,” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan had told Fox News Channel in an interview on Tuesday. “This is going to be a short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.”
The back-to-back shootings sparked protests in Maine, Houston and Boston and raised questions over ICE agents’ lack of body cameras.
Federal authorities have offered no evidence to support contentions that either man posed a threat to ICE agents or the public at large that would justify the use of lethal force to stop them. In other instances involving violent encounters, initial statements from immigration enforcement officials have been contradicted by video or other evidence.
At least seven people have been shot dead during federal immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when Trump launched mass deportations after returning to office following campaign promises of an immigration crackdown.
Nationwide arrests of immigrants have surged in recent weeks, despite the administration’s shift to more targeted operations, away from the broad street sweeps that characterized earlier crackdowns in Democratic-led cities. Those heavy-handed tactics drew intense criticism, especially after two U.S. citizens were shot dead in Minnesota earlier this year.
The Maine driver, 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran, was a Colombian national with a wife and a 3-year-old daughter. He was authorized to work in the U.S., according to immigration advocates.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Joseph Ax; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Deepa Babington)
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